Interest in mobile data rose another notch last week as BellSouth Corp said that it will invest $300m in a joint venture with privately held RAM Broadcasting Corp, New York to operate mobile data communications networks worldwide CI No 1,779). RAM is the largest owner of RAM Mobile data the competitor to Dowty-owned Cognito in the UK. But a spokesperson for the UK RAM operation said that it was still too early to say how in would affect the new-born service here, which is lagging behind Cognito. The latest alliance is not aimed primarily at the UK, instead Atlanta-based BellSouth, already one of the largest US cellular phone operators, is moving with the RAM venture into direct competition with the two-year-old Ardis system owned by IBM Corp and Motorola Inc, currently the only other US mobile data system. The RAM network currently operates in 15 US cities and has regulatory approval to add another 35 cities, which it said should be completed by mid-1992. RAM chairman Carl Robert Aron told a news conference at Telecom ’91 in Geneva that the system has a relatively modest number of users now but he expects there will be 1m subscribers in the US in the next 10 years, Reuter reports. Industry analysts have projected that the mobile data market has the potential for up to 3.8m subscribers in the US and 5m in Europe within the next five years. BellSouth is even more optimistic. Wireless data networks are where cellular was eight years ago – poised for dramatic growth, BellSouth president William McCoy said. Our research indicates there are more than 10m people in the US alone with a need for mobile data services. BellSouth and RAM will be equal partners in the overall joint venture which will include RAM’s mobile data operations in the UK and its cellular, paging and other holdings in the US. RAM has some 16,000 US paging subscribers. However, RAM will own 51% of the joint venture’s US mobile data network, giving it control of the largest potential market; omnipresent L M Ericsson Telefom AB subsequently said it hopes the joint venture will buy $225m of its equipment by end-1994.
